Algiers, Algeria–Algerian authorities have dismantled an international network specialising in trafficking people through Algeria to Europe, local media reported on Wednesday.
The agency specialising in tackling organised crime arrested nine Syrians and six Algerians suspected of belonging to the group which trafficked Syrians and Lebanese, the report said.
Millions of Syrians have been uprooted by 12 years of war in their country, and almost one million are in Germany. Lebanese have also been fleeing their country’s economic collapse.
During a five-month investigation, the Algerian police uncovered a network transporting the migrants to Benghazi airport in Libya, according to news website Ennaharonline.
The migrants would then be taken by road to the Libyan town of Ghadames, from which they would cross the border on remote paths through the desert to Debdeb on the Algerian side.
Finally they would be taken to the western Algerian city of Oran to prepare for clandestine sea crossings to Europe, according to Ennaharonline.
Such crossing attempts claim the lives of thousands of migrants each year.
The website said migrants had to pay “exorbitant” sums in foreign currency to reach Europe.
Also read: UAE leads arrest of the ‘most wanted’ Eritrean trafficker
During the operation, the police also reportedly seized more than $11,000 along with almost 9,000 euros.
In January, The United Arab Emirates detailed its role in an international operation to arrest an Eritrean fugitive in Sudan accused of being “the world’s most wanted” people smuggler.
Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam has been accused of being a smuggling kingpin, running a camp in Libya where hundreds of East African migrants seeking passage to Europe were allegedly kidnapped, raped and extorted.
Habtemariam, subject of two Interpol red notices by Ethiopia and the Netherlands, was arrested on January 1 by Sudanese police in coordination with UAE authorities, UAE interior ministry official Saeed Abdullah al-Suwaidi told reporters.
The Eritrean, on Interpol’s radar since 2019, earned a reputation for “particularly cruel and violent treatment of migrants”, Interpol said.
“We have now shut down one of the most important trafficking routes into Europe, which illegally moved thousands of migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, through Libya and into Europe,” Suwaidi said in statement.
Habtemariam’s arrest followed a joint UAE and Interpol investigation, beginning last year, that tracked illicit financial transactions made by his brother, according to Suwaidi.
The Eritrean will now face trial in the UAE for money laundering, and authorities will review the possibility of his extradition after the case is closed in the UAE, Suwaidi added.
Habtemariam was arrested in Ethiopia in 2020 but escaped custody after one year, and was later sentenced in absentia to life in prison.